DeGrado, W.F.

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 2011, 108, 6823-6827, 10.1073/pnas.1018191108

The active sites of enzymes are lined with side chains whose dynamic, geometric, and chemical properties have been finely tuned relative to the corresponding residues in water. For example, the carboxylates of glutamate and aspartate are weakly basic in water but become strongly basic when dehydrated in enzymatic sites. The dehydration of the carboxylate, although intrinsically thermodynamically unfavorable, is achieved by harnessing the free energy of folding and substrate binding to reach the required basicity. Allosterically regulated enzymes additionally rely on the free energy of ligand binding to stabilize the protein in a catalytically competent state. We demonstrate the interplay of protein folding energetics and functional group tuning to convert calmodulin (CaM), a regulatory binding protein, into AlleyCat, an allosterically controlled eliminase. Upon binding Ca(II), native CaM opens a hydrophobic pocket on each of its domains. We computationally identified a mutant that (i) accommodates carboxylate as a general base within these pockets, (ii) interacts productively in the Michaelis complex with the substrate, and (iii) stabilizes the transition state for the reaction. Remarkably, a single mutation of an apolar residue at the bottom of an otherwise hydrophobic cavity confers catalytic activity on calmodulin. AlleyCat showed the expected pH-rate profile, and it was inactivated by mutation of its active site Glu to Gln. A variety of control mutants demonstrated the specificity of the design. The activity of this minimal 75-residue allosterically regulated catalyst is similar to that obtained using more elaborate computational approaches to redesign complex enzymes to catalyze the Kemp elimination reaction.

Lubitz, W.; Reijerse, E.

Biochemistry 2015, 54, 1474-1483, 10.1021/bi501391d

[FeFe]-hydrogenases are to date the only enzymes for which it has been demonstrated that the native inorganic binuclear cofactor of the active site Fe2(adt)(CO)3(CN)2 (adt = azadithiolate = [S-CH2-NH-CH2-S]2–) can be synthesized on the laboratory bench and subsequently inserted into the unmaturated enzyme to yield fully functional holo-enzyme (Berggren, G. et al. (2013) Nature 499, 66–70; Esselborn, J. et al. (2013) Nat. Chem. Biol. 9, 607–610). In the current study, we exploit this procedure to introduce non-native cofactors into the enzyme. Mimics of the binuclear subcluster with a modified bridging dithiolate ligand (thiodithiolate, N-methylazadithiolate, dimethyl-azadithiolate) and three variants containing only one CN– ligand were inserted into the active site of the enzyme. We investigated the activity of these variants for hydrogen oxidation as well as proton reduction and their structural accommodation within the active site was analyzed using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Interestingly, the monocyanide variant with the azadithiolate bridge showed ∼50% of the native enzyme activity. This would suggest that the CN– ligands are not essential for catalytic activity, but rather serve to anchor the binuclear subsite inside the protein pocket through hydrogen bonding. The inserted artificial cofactors with a propanedithiolate and an N-methylazadithiolate bridge as well as their monocyanide variants also showed residual activity. However, these activities were less than 1% of the native enzyme. Our findings indicate that even small changes in the dithiolate bridge of the binuclear subsite lead to a rather strong decrease of the catalytic activity. We conclude that both the Brønsted base function and the conformational flexibility of the native azadithiolate amine moiety are essential for the high catalytic activity of the native enzyme.